An Elk River Boy made good

World's greatest sniper never used a scope

After Joseph Stalin signed the non-agression pact with Germany, Germany felt free to invade Poland without Russian interference as Russia invaded its half of Poland as agreed in the secret pact. But the pact also left Russia free to invade and impose its will on its smaller neighbors without German interference.

With the rest of the world occupied with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union was free to gobble up its weaker neighbors, who fell one by one.

One small neighbor, however, didn't share that fate. It drew a line in the snow and said "no more." Although we remember the courage of Britain as it stood alone against Hitler, few think of when Finland stood alone against the Soviet Union.

For the Soviet Union, conquering Finland should have been as easy as plucking a spring flower. Its army outnumbered Finland's four to one in soldiers, 200 to one in tanks and 30 to one in aircraft. Russia's population at the time was more than 170 million. Finland's population was around three million.

Before Germany invaded, Stalin had easily conquered ­ Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all of which ­ remained part of the Soviet Union until the end of the Soviet Union itself. That's what Stalin had in mind for Finland when the Soviets invaded Finland on Nov. 30, 1939.

At that time, Simo Hayha had been out of the military for 14 years and prior service was limited to one year of mandatory service and reserve drilling. After the invasion, he was called to active duty in a sniping unit. Hayha didn't have any of the world's best sniping rifles of the day, such as sniper versions of the Swedish Mauser, German 98k Mauser or the American 30.06 Springfield. Heck, he didn't even have a scope.

But that was by choice. He turned down a scoped Swedish Mauser and stuck with the rifle he knew, an old bolt-action Russian made Mosin-Nagant rifle. No scope, just iron sights and a remarkable skill.

Hayha was assigned to the front along the Kolla River, where the Soviet Army outnumber Finnish troops 100 to one in places. During that winter, he had 542 confirmed kills, with another 200 unconfirmed.

Hayha refused a scoped rifle and shot with open, iron sights for several reasons. One, he concluded was that a scope forced the sniper to lift his head too high while shooting. The other reason is made very clear in the result of duel he had with a Russian sniper around Christmas, 1939.

The Soviet Union put a bounty on his head. It send teams of snipers ­ with artillery support ­ out to hunt him down. While the Soviets had been unable to kill him, Hayha's company was losing an alarming number of leaders. The company commander assumed a Russian sniper was to blame and he orered Hayha to find him.

Hayha patiently waited in the snow all day until the setting sun was at his back. He located the Russian sniper by the glare of his scope and shot him, open sights, mind you, at 492 yards.

On March 6, Hayha was finally taken out of the war, just as peace was being negotiated in Moscow. While covering retreating Finnish troops he was shot in the jaw. The bullet tumbled and blew nearly half his head away. He lapsed into a coma and when he awoke a week later in a Finnish hospital, the war was over.

Technically, Finland lost that war, but it was fared the fate of other countries the Soviet Union invaded and assimulated into the Soviet Union. Finland lost a relatively small strip of land, but kept its sovereignty. Like all snipers, Hayha targeted officers and weapons teams especially, but the Soviet "human-wave" tactics surely gave him plenty of targets. At five-feet tall, he was also a small target and well camoflagued in a white suit made from bed sheets.

Whatever contributed to his success, he was World War II's most successful sniper.

It took Hayha years to recover from that shot to the head, but eventually he did and made a living as a moose hunter and dog breeder. When asked about the secret to his shooting skills, he said "practice."